This report explores the NOAA storm database to identify which types of severe weather events are most harmful to population health and which have the greatest economic consequences in the United States. The raw compressed data file (StormData.csv.bz2, over 900,000 records from 1950-2011) was loaded directly into R without any outside preprocessing. Property and crop damage figures were converted to U.S. dollars using their exponent codes (K = thousand, M = million, B = billion). Events were then aggregated by the EVTYPE variable, summing fatalities and injuries to measure health impact and summing property plus crop damage to measure economic impact. The results show that tornadoes are by far the most harmful event type with respect to population health. Floods and hurricane/typhoon events cause the greatest economic losses. These findings can help municipal managers prioritize preparedness resources. All code needed to reproduce the figures and tables is included below.